Monday, September 10, 2018

Oval Test has been a slow burner, which may well ignite by Tuesday
night but in the meantime there have been enough subplots to keep everyone
diverted. The match is progressing fast enough to avoid that modern rarity, a
draw.With two days remaining England
lead by 154 with eight wickets in hand and the pitch is becoming ever more
worn: a slow burner is becoming a slow turner.

What many have been writing about is the last innings of the
silent opener - Alastair Cook – he batted in exactly the same way as in his
previous 291 innings and that was very handy for England. He is still there at the end on 46.While Indian openers have failed – Murali Vijay
already condemned and so is Dinesh Karthik, while Shikhar Dhawan & KL Rahul
enjoyed reprieve after repeated failures, Ajinkya Rahana has not lived up to
any reputation, no reason for keeping the triple centurion Karun Nair out ! –
it is a different perspective – not too many would have noticed Keaton Jennings
repeated failures.No England opener has
ever gone as many consecutive innings (18) without a half-century and, against
deliveries from seamers that would have hit the stumps in this series, he is
averaging just 1.33. Those are figures that wouldn't flatter an inanimate
object. This was the second time in successive matches that Jennings had been
out leaving a ball and he has been moved out of the slips having dropped a
couple of relatively straightforward chances.Yet he could still be on plane to England tour of Lanka !!

Alastair Cook can be intimidating with his silence and smile. He
flashed one after absolutely middling the final ball before tea at The Oval and
walked off. England finished the day 154 runs ahead. More importantly, if only
for this Test, he was 46 not out. Playing his 291st and final innings, he'd got
off the mark with a trademark flick off the pads and the crowd came to its feet
once again. A good portion of them had been hanging out by the stairs leading
up to the England dressing room after India had been bowled out for 292 in
their first innings, thanks to Ravindra Jadeja's unbeaten 86. After 161 Tests,
Cook has all of England waiting with bated breath. There couldn't be a better
time for century number 33.

His career statistics prior to this Test is12254 runs in 289 innings (160 tests) 32
centuries; 56 fifties at an average of 44.88 + 3204 One day runs in 92 innings
!Only Sachin Tendulkar (15921); Ricky
Ponting (13378) ; Jack Kallis (13289), Rahul
Dravid (13288) and Kumara Sangakkara(12371) are above him – and none of them are playing still.

Have seen Krish Srikkanth driving his fiat to Marina ground
and V. Sivaramakrishnan & CS Suraishkumar coming in Bullets – Alastair Cook,
James Anderson, Ollie Pope and Keaton Jennings arrived at Kia Oval by
underground train.When asked about
crowd mobbing, Cook was to say, it is different in England than in India.

Statistically, Morne Morkel has had Cook 12 times in 19
matches while Ishant Sharma has 11 in 17 – Ishant too still has a chance to
equal Morne Morkel ! ~ what Morkel cannot match is – Ishant Sharma got out to
Cook in 2014 being the only victim of Cook.